Saiyuki Reload: Dawn, New Company
by Wildcat531
Summary: The Saiyuki gang meets what may be their hardest challenge yet: a determined Mary Sue out to take over their show. PG13 because of the nature of some of the humor and a little bit of swearing.
1. Dawn: New Company 01

Jump it up, jump it up! *play opening music/credits for RELOAD*  
  
*title screen display: Saiyuki Reload: Dawn ~ New Company*  
  
Goku dodged around the youkai's swing, bringing his naibou around to crush its skull. The youkai, gasping, went down as half a hundred more surged forward to take its place. They were everywhere, it seemed, but the group cut through them like a knife through cheesecake.  
  
"Small fry," Sanzou grumbled, shooting two over Goku's shoulder. "This is taking too long."  
  
"Hey, you can't have all the fun!" Goku protested, beating the crowd back as he spun around and leveled the end of his staff in their faces. "I'm just getting started!"  
  
"Now, now," Hakkai said, pausing a moment to incinerate another small batch of the enemy. "They'll be more by tonight, Goku, and at this rate, we won't be done in time to reach a town for lunch."  
  
"Lunch?!" Goku perked up, knocking down a few more youkai as he turned to face Sanzou. "Can we get something good?"  
  
Laughter broke in from the sidelines. "Hey, the monkey's hungry again," Gojyo chuckled. "He can't see any farther than his stomach."  
  
"Shut up, cockroach!"  
  
"Make me, monkey."  
  
Sanzou started muttering, but Hakkai seriously doubted he was starting the prayer that turned his scriptures into killing devices. He was about to break in when he saw the youkai at the rear of the pack suddenly lose interest in favor of a girl that had appeared on the road.  
  
It was hard to tell when Hakkai got angry: by default, he always wore a mask of perfect politeness. And it wasn't even a mask most of the time, for he honestly cared about social niceties. Just because he was going to kill someone didn't mean he had to be rude about it. On the other hand, their rudeness was quite irritating, and he found it quite rude that the youkai would abandon their fight for a civilian.  
  
"If you will please turn your attention back to where it belongs," he asked as a good portion of the crowd fell unknowing victim to his devastating light attack.  
  
Sanzou finished his muttering and shouted, pointing at the youkai. They screamed as his scriptures suddenly came to life, growing out in streams that wrapped around youkai limbs and crushed the life out of them. They died, not in ones or twos but in masses, crashing to the ground and dissolving, with only a dark stain to show where they had been.  
  
The girl stood trembling, her pretty face flecked with youkai blood, which one perfectly manicured hand stroked as if she couldn't quite credit it was there at all. Her blond hair had hung in perfect ringlets this morning, but drenched as it was now with her sweat and the aftermath of battle, it had uncurled to a scraggly mass. She wore a tight pink jacket, a shirt that exposed a good portion of her anatomy, tight jeans, and high-heeled boots.  
  
"Are you all right, miss?" Gojyo asked, putting his hand on her shoulder. "It's not right that such a pretty girl has to see such nasty things. What's your name?"  
  
"Mary Sue," she said, recovering enough to look him in the eyes. "Gojyo, isn't it?"  
  
He laughed. "Has my reputation preceded me?"  
  
"Oh, I know all about you," she said, dismissing the question with a wave of her hand. She walked over to Hakkai, opened her big blue eyes wide, and asked, "Hakkai?"  
  
"It is very nice to meet you," he said, offering her a bow. "Since it appears you already know our party, it must be that you have no need for introductions."  
  
"Hakkai . . ." She put her head on his chest and folded her arms around him in a hug. He froze, unwilling to look down, as that would put his eyes squarely in the crevices of her shirt. "Hakkai, I know how hard it must have been to lose Kanan. But you won't recover until you find another woman! Sleep with me!"  
  
*commercial break* 


	2. Dawn: New Company 02

You wandered off during commercial break, like a good American, to grab a few snacks, and maybe a glass of something to drink too. But as you hear the re-introduction of the show, you hurry back into the living room and sit down, eager for more.  
  
--- ** ----  
  
"Sleep with me!"  
  
Everybody froze, not quite willing to credit what he had just heard. Was it possible that anyone could be that blatantly forward and not realize how utterly out of place it sounded? The four of them were perfectly used to innocent-seeming creatures trying to kill them, impersonate them (that had certainly been amusing) ---well, there were one or two attempted seductions, but they were pathetically transparent attempts by youkai assassins, and this weak little human girl had no chance of overpowering any of them. Somehow, Hakkai doubted she was as skilled as Yaone, either, in the realm of medicines and drugs, which forced him to conclude she must really want to bed him, as incredibly rude as that was.  
  
"I must refuse," he said, holding his voice absolutely steady. To those who didn't know him well, he appeared unfazed. Sanzou knew better, and coughed to hide a snicker.  
  
"Refuse?" Mary Sue forced her eyes wider, until they bulged from their sockets, the clumpy black lashes trembling around them. "How could you? Me?!"  
  
"It is most improper," he murmured, disentangling her arms and pushing her away. "Please, go back to your home. Danger follows us. It would be unfortunate indeed if you were to be killed."  
  
In the lightest nuances of his tone, unsaid but not unnoticed by those such as Sanzou and Gojyo, was the suggestion that perhaps it would not be such a bad thing if she were to follow them and find Fate unkind. Sanzou pulled out a few bullets and started reloading his gun, obstinately because he'd just used them all. Nobody mentioned the particularly underhanded look he was giving Mary Sue. She was too busy leaking tears full of mascara to notice much.  
  
"You . . . won't?" she whispered.  
  
Gojyo stepped forward, putting a hand on Mary Sue's shoulder. "Hey, pretty girls shouldn't cry. If you want some action, I'm the better choice anyhow."  
  
"Thanks," she sniffled, burying her face in his vest and smearing the blood and mascara all over it. "You're so nice, Gojyo. Nobody here appreciates you."  
  
"Damn right they don't," he said, throwing a wink to Hakkai. "Why don't you sit down for a little while and then tell me about yourself?"  
  
She continued on as if she hadn't heard. "It must be because of your mom. You learned that some people have feelings, when you had to go on your own. It must have been so hard!"  
  
Gojyo had frozen, in a position remarkably similar to the one Hakkai had taken. Only Goku didn't know much about his past, and that was mostly because the monkey wasn't subtle enough to pick up on the hints that were all he ever mentioned. Gojyo didn't know anybody that would know of him, know all about him, or why she'd show up now. His nerves screamed at him to back away, to put a safe amount of distance between himself and her, himself and those memories.  
  
Sanzou was nearly laughing aloud by this time, but he hid his humor under a hard glare. He absolutely would not risk encouraging her in the slightest. He might not be a traditional priest, or a very good one, but he made sure nobody would ever confuse him with Gojyo and his willingness to bed anything with breasts.  
  
"You'd better not try that with me," he said. "I'll kill you."  
  
"Oh, no!" she exclaimed, clearly horrified. "Everybody knows you're with Goku."  
  
"With . . ?" Gojyo asked, then doubled over with laughter. "The monkey?!"  
  
Hakkai shook his head, staring at Mary Sue, unable to credit what he'd just heard. Sanzou's gun was up in an instant, leveled directly at her head.  
  
Goku came around, tugging on Sanzou's sleeve. His eyes had lost their usually vague happy look, suddenly worried. "Sanzou, is she saying we---"  
  
"Shut up," Sanzou snarled. "I don't sleep with women, I don't sleep with men, and I don't sleep with animals! Die!"  
  
Hakkai intercepted the shot, placing his hand on Sanzou's arm and forcing the gun's muzzle to face the dirt. "She is certainly the rudest human I have ever met," he said. "But she is still human. Please, we do not want any trouble with the town. We must leave now if we intend to be at an inn by nightfall."  
  
Sanzou held his gaze with a glare that could melt bullets, but eventually he snorted and put the gun away. "Let's go," he snarled. For once, nobody wanted to argue. They left Mary Sue in the dirt, scrabbling futilely to catch up with the jeep's dust trail as it bounced down the road. 


	3. Dawn: New Company 03

Dinner that night was unusually quiet. The other patrons had only to look at Sanzou's group to know something had seriously unsettled all four, and the inn as a whole was a lot more quiet than normal. Things at their table were pretty dead, too, except every now and then Sanzou would start up again.  
  
"I'll kill her," he snarled, stabbing his plate with his chopsticks. Goku winced away from that; Gojyo was too sunk in his own gloomy contemplations to care.  
  
"We left her a good distance behind," Hakkai said, sipping his sake. "It would require a detour to go back and murder her. Besides, she hasn't acted against us. Her only crime is knowing too much, and holding several false ideas about us."  
  
"Still gonna kill her," Sanzou said, gulping down his beer. Hakkai was a little worried for him, because Sanzou was starting to slur his words slightly. It took a lot to get him drunk, but when he was drunk, it took even more to get him sober again without destroying the building in the process. The crumpled beer cans strewn all over the floor near his chair attested to the level of his rage.  
  
Hakkai thought it best not to mention that he thought he recognized the grimy figure trudging through the door. By rights, he should be offended that Mary Sue had somehow found a way to travel as fast as Hakaryuu, but his only worry now was to keep Sanzou from spotting her and killing random patrons in his attempt to straighten his aim.  
  
"I am tired," he said, standing up. "I will see to our rooms. You may go rest now, everybody."  
  
Goku sighed, tucked a meat bun in his palm, and bounced up the stairs to claim the best bed. Gojyo followed him, half-heartedly yelling that if Goku even thought he'd get the window room he had another thing coming. Sanzou paused a moment, but failed to see through Hakkai's subtle ploy and headed upstairs after the other two, a sour frown twisting his face.  
  
Mary Sue had collapsed in a corner, too tired to notice Hakkai as he discussed the fees with the innkeeper and slipped upstairs to his own bed. If they left early enough, he hoped, they could avoid her entirely. The trick would be dragging everybody out of bed without letting them know she was here.  
  
**  
  
Mary Sue had no such plans to leave them in peace. Hakkai woke up barely half an hour after he'd collapsed on his bed to the sound of Sanzou's handgun going off and a healthy string of curses from the room across the hall. Mary Sue was saying something, but his bellowing kept cutting off her words. Hakkai poked Hakaryuu, and the little dragon crawled out of bed to lock the door.  
  
Not a moment to soon, as it turned out. Somebody rattled the doorknob, and Mary Sue whispered, "Hello? Is this one of the Sanzou party?" Hakkai held his peace, drifting back into sleep, although it wasn't a very peaceful rest. Gojyo and Goku apparently had similar ideas, but she already knew where Sanzou was, and every hour or so attempted to knock on his door and ask him where the other three were staying. He had to at least credit her with an unwillingness to barge in on everybody else.  
  
Or maybe, he concluded the next morning, it was an inability to move doors with beds and dressers holding them closed. Sanzou stumbled sleepily to the jeep, unaware that Gojyo had helped Hakkai lock Mary Sue into Gojyo's room so that she wouldn't get shot. Goku grumbled about missing breakfast, but not very hard. He kept looking towards the stairs, as if expecting Mary Sue to come down any moment and start asking him about Sanzou.  
  
They ran into a little problem before they could leave. After Sanzou had paid for the rooms, he met them outside in time to see a new horde of determined youkai bearing down the road.  
  
"Let's go!" Sanzou shouted, leaping into the jeep with everyone else. Hakkai threw Hakaryuu in reverse and skidded backwards, the little dragon's engine roaring as they started down the road in the opposite direction.  
  
To see an equally large crowd of youkai effectively pinning them where they were.  
  
"We can't drive through this!" Hakkai warned, getting out. "Hakaryuu will get hurt. We must fight them here."  
  
Six shots felled the first few on either side; Sanzou taking advantage of his ability to hit them before anybody was close enough to hit back. Gojyo took down the next few, his blade arcing forward to deprive their attackers of arms and heads and legs. Goku wasn't about to wait for the youkai to get here; he gave a glad yell and plunged right into the fray on one side, holding a good portion of them back.  
  
Hakkai was about to add his own contributions, when the door to the inn burst open and Mary Sue stumbled out. "I can help!" she called, running forward. Hakkai quickly shot the youkai behind her with his light attack before it managed to finish the stroke that would've decapitated her, then wondered why he'd bothered. But after that, the youkai were swarming up on either side of him, and he had to concentrate more upon the battle at hand.  
  
Nobody saw much of the overall fight, too busy with his own little portion of it, but all of them ran into Mary Sue at one time or another. She didn't have anything remotely resembling a weapon, but unlike Hakkai, she wasn't even able to use energy or special moves to defend herself. About the only kind thing anyone could say for her was that her clumsy attempt to engage with the enemy often startled them enough to allow one of the four in Sanzou's party to pick it off. And the worst part of it all had to be that she still thought she was helping.  
  
Goku finished his piece first, mostly because he had separated himself from the others, and all the youkai around him were either dead or had gone past him to die at the hands of one of the others. He was about to join them when he saw an outstretched wing in the corner of his eye, and turned to see Kougaiji and Dokugaiji dismounting a transport dragon, and Yaone and Lirin standing beside a second dragon already on the ground.  
  
Normally, Goku wasn't much one for thinking, except in the context of helping him get another bowl of beef stew or putting one up on an enemy. But as he glanced at Kougaiji, then at Mary Sue, he had to wonder if such an annoying human could've come from him. Kougaiji certainly knew most of the things about them that she did, although her odd ideas about Goku and Sanzou were entirely her own fault. So when Kougaiji started walking towards the dying center of the fight, Goku ran up to him, shouting, "Hey!" 


	4. Dawn: New Company 04

Kougaiji turned around, grimacing as Goku ran up to him. "I don't have time for you," he said. "Unless you know why all the youkai have suddenly started a mass migration to your location. It's the Minus Waves all over again, only this time, I think they're after you."  
  
Goku brushed that off. "Did you send her?!" he demanded, flinging his arm back and pointing at Mary Sue, who had given up on fighting and sat on the ground, trying to recover her breath, as the others nearly killed each other trying not to trip over her. Sanzou kicked her, once, but she wailed something and clung to his leg, after which everybody gave her a very wide berth.  
  
As if Kougaiji's attention drew her own, Mary Sue looked up. Her face lost the tight lines of weariness, and she bounced up and hurled herself at the youkai. Goku stepped back, laughing, as she babbled at a bewildered Kougaiji.  
  
"It's you!!! It's really, really you!! Like, omiGAWD!!!!"  
  
Kougaiji stepped back as she threw herself against him in a tight embrace. "I've loved you for as long as I can remember! Would you sleep with me?"  
  
The look on Kougaiji's face when she said that was priceless. He looked as if Goku had force-fed him a hedgehog spine-side up. Any dignity he tried to summon vanished as Mary Sue continued to squeeze herself against him and proclaim her admiration of him at the top of her lungs.  
  
Goku hadn't known Kougaiji could blush. The youkai prince had a faint crimson stain across his cheekbones as he forcibly wrenched Mary Sue's arms from him and threw her to the ground. Dokugaiji, hiding a smile, stepped in front of his master to intercept this curious menace and buy his master time to save face.  
  
"You'd better watch out for that one," Gojyo called, strolling over with the rest of the party. "You'd be better off on the other side of the world."  
  
"Doku?" she asked, but didn't wait for an answer. Her lower lip trembled, and she actually started to cry. Whether she meant anything by it other than a show was anyone's guess. "I think it was so sweet that you loved Gojyo enough to kill your mom to save him. Do you think you could show me the same kind of love?"  
  
Sanzou stopped walking and stared at Gojyo. "You're related?"  
  
Gojyo ran a hand through his hair, instinctively touching the scars on his cheek. "Eh, well," he tried to laugh, "it's not something we really talk about. He's gone his way, I've got mine."  
  
Yaone shook her head and stepped up to Dokugaiji's side. "Excuse me," she said to Mary Sue, and shoved a handful of powder under her nose. Mary Sue snorted it up, coughed for several moments, and collapsed. Yaone caught her as she slid, and laid her on the ground. "That was most improper."  
  
Nobody moved for a moment. "Does anybody know what to do with her?" Gojyo asked.  
  
"Kill her," Sanzou and Kougaiji chorused, then shut up to glare at each other.  
  
Dokugaiji waited for a few minutes, making sure he wasn't going to inturrupt either of them. "Can't we just leave her here and go on? You--- you're fast enough in that jeep to get away from somebody on foot. And we'll just go back home."  
  
"I wish it were that simple," Hakkai said. "We attempted that very thing yesterday, only to have her find us that night. I do not know how she caught up, but if she did it once she will most likely do it again."  
  
"She won't be chasing us," Gojyo said, smirking at his brother. "She seems a bit stuck on your little prince."  
  
"Naaahh, what's the problem?" Lirin asked, bouncing up next to her brother. "Just beat her up so badly she won't come back!"  
  
"It's rude," Hakkai said.  
  
"She's a woman," Gojyo said. "And what's more, she'll just stand there. I can't hit a woman who isn't going to attack me. Besides, she's human. If we can find somebody to take her off our hands, she can go back to living however she was before. She's not crazy like most of the youkai."  
  
Goku spotted something moving in the forest, and jumped just as a youkai spear pierced the ground where he'd been standing. He landed on its quivering hilt, calling out his naibou. "Hey, Sanzou!" he said. "There's lots more of them now!"  
  
Sanzou was eyeballing Mary Sue's dirty, bloodstained, and currently slumbering form. A dangerous gleam appeared on the edges of his smile. "Bring it on."  
  
Kougaiji and Dokugaiji looked at him questioningly as Yaone pushed Lirin back to help her get the dragons out of danger. Lirin protested mightily, but one look from Kougaiji cut through her resistance, along with Yaone pointing out that if the dragons were hurt Kougaiji would have no way to get them all back.  
  
Operating under an uneasy truce, the quasi-enemies turned to face the youkai horde together. Dokugaiji called out his sword; Kougaiji started chanting, summoning magic; Hakkai and Gojyo split off to cover the open road. But Sanzou backed away from Mary Sue just enough to lure the youkai close to her before he had to deal with them. Uncharacteristically, he waited for them to come to him before he shot them.  
  
One, two, three youkai bodies crumbling to oblivion. Four, stumbling in past Goku. Five, grazing number six with the same shot. And the body on the ground began to twitch with the blood of the last, Mary Sue clawing her way into wakefulness as her nails shed their paint and mutated into claws; her ears jutted backwards into elfin points; her clothes stretched under the bulk of new muscle, the flimsy shirt breaking entirely and the jacket faring little better. Her hair, scraggly and matted from all the crud she'd accumulated in the two days she'd been chasing them, flared out with a life of its own.  
  
"A youkai?" Gojyo said, his jaw dropping.  
  
"A youkai," Hakkai confirmed, trading an approving glance with Sanzou. "A youkai without a limiter."  
  
Mary Sue glanced from one to the other, nervously. "I still have my mind!" she shrilled. "I have a limiter too, see?" She flung her braceleted arm under Hakkai's nose.  
  
He grabbed her hand, gently, and removed the bracelet. "A youkai," he repeated, smiling, "without a limiter."  
  
She backed away. "No. You wouldn't do this. Hakkai!" She swung around, reaching for Gojyo, but he had his blade already between the two of them.  
  
"Sorry, but you're not my type," he said.  
  
"Gojyo . . ." she whispered. Her eyes moved on to Sanzou. Or rather, the barrel of Sanzou's gun. He was smiling, just like Hakkai, but his had a great deal more bloodlust in it.  
  
"Goodbye," he said.  
  
Her body stiffened, and she shrieked as the end of Goku's naibou protruded from her chest. Her hand drooped, the claws brushing the ground as her body separated into a billion motes.  
  
And then she was gone.  
  
"I'm going to kill you, idiot monkey!" Sanzou yelled, yanking out his fan and cracking Goku upside the head.  
  
"What for?" Goku yelped, trying to avoid the fan but not succeeding very well. "I got there first! It was just a youkai!"  
  
"It was her," he growled, slapping Goku again.  
  
"Eh?" Goku asked. "Since when was she a youkai? I thought you said she was human!"  
  
"Shut up and go to hell," Sanzou said, advancing with the fan.  
  
Hakkai waved to Kougaiji. "Please thank Yaone for me for her quick thinking. I believe we can handle the rest."  
  
Without a word, Kougaiji stalked off, with Dokugaiji trailing. Gojyo had the grace to wait until they were out of earshot before he burst out laughing.  
  
"Did you see Kougaiji's face?!"  
  
Hakkai nodded, the smile still on his lips. "Now, I think, we must convince Sanzou not to kill the monkey. Then we head west."  
  
"West it is!"  
  
*play ending credits* 


End file.
